Sausages have been traditionally made by filling the natural intestines of sheep or other animals, with a sausage product whereupon the filled natural casing was formed into links for cooking. In more modern times, sausages are predominantly made by introducing an emulsion into an artificial casing, which encases the sausage material through linking and preliminary cooking. Machines for making sausages with artificial casings have a high volume capability (up to 30,000 sausages per hour). Efforts have been made to use these high-speed machines with natural casings. However, because of the nature of the natural casings including their relatively shorter and variable length and including their relatively shorter and variable length and non-uniform diameter, modern sausage encasing machines have not achieved the volume and capacity with natural casings as they do with artificial casings.
It is therefore a principal object of this invention to provide a method of advancing a natural casing along the length of a hollow meat stuffing tube that improves the state of the art.
A further object of this invention is to provide a method which uses a roller to advance a casing toward the discharge end of a stuffing tube.
A still further object of this invention is to provide a method of advancing an encasing of a sausage that can be controlled by a cam.
These and other objects will be apparent to those skilled in the art.